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[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Fried bread.
Bread
Fat of choice (preferably something tasty)

Heat the fat in a pan until it begins bubbling and stuff.
Get your big thick slab of unhealthy white bread and stick it in your pan of unhealthy fat.
Fry bread on one side until golden brown.

Eat with other greasy fried stuff.

[Wiles]

There's a place near my university that makes sweet potato burritos. They are oh so good. I am going to need to make an attempt to replicate it at home sometime.

I like to cook but my menu is not very diverse. Any suggestions for a tasty (milk free) pasta dish on a students budget? The only pasta dish I make regularly is spaghetti.

[SirHoneyBadger]

You could try making pasta aioli.

It's pretty cheap, although you're going to want to spring for a bottle of olive oil. You can use the cheapest one available though. It doesn't need to be extra virgin as long as it's 100% olive oil, and even a small bottle will be enough to make the dish several times.

Then, you'll want some fresh garlic and some Italian herbs. Fresh herbs are ofcourse better, but dried will work if that's what you can afford. You'll also want some parmezan or romano cheese. The grated stuff in a plastic can will again work.

Peal and chop up as much garlic as you want, and set aside.

Cook the pasta until al dente (it'll typically have instructions on the box, if not, boil about a gallon of water--add about a 4th of a cup of salt to it and a teaspoon of oil (doesn't have to be the olive oil), if you want--and then cook the pasta in the water for 8 to 10 minutes, until al dente, stirring once every minute or two, and drain.), and set the pasta aside to drain.

Put about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a largeish frying pan, and set the heat on the stove to medium. Let the oil heat for 3 minutes, and then add the garlic and the Italian herbs to it, and stir. Cook them together for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently, and then raise the heat to high, for 1 to 2 minutes (until the burner turns red), while continuing to stir continuously. Be careful, because the oil will be very hot. Then turn the heat off (but leave the pan on the burner), and immediately add the pasta. Stir the oil and herbs into the pasta, thoroughly, and then take off the heat and serve immediately with the grated cheese on top (about 1/4th of a cup or so).

It'll serve from 2 to 4 people, depending on how hungry everybody is.

This dish is good because it's tasty by itself (also filling, and relatively healthy), and you can also do a lot of things with it. You can top it with cooked chicken, or add a-thoroughly drained-can of tuna, or peppers, or capers to the oil (infact, tuna with this dish is particularly good. Just don't add more than a half a cup of extras to the oil), so it's a good opportunity to experiment, without breaking your budget.

It'll also keep slightly better than most other pastas, because of the oil, but you might just want to warm it up and then top it with spaghetti sauce.

It takes some skill to get it right-and it's potentially somewhat dangerous, since you'll be working quickly with hot oil-but if you do it carefully, you can learn as you go.

[Hawkfrost]

Hawkfrost: What sort of things do you like to eat? If you'll let me know, I'll try to find you some easy recipes.

The nice thing about just learning to cook is you can experiment around and figure out what you like to eat, and then learn how to cook those things, before branching out.

I like most kinds of food, I'm up for anything.
Italian and Chinese are my favorites though.

I'm 16 and living at home, so I don't have a budget problem, and we already have most of the ingredients needed for most things (We are a very food loving family considering how we are all skinny. My mom is a great cook but has no time to teach me properly.)

[SirHoneyBadger]

Italian and Chinese are great places to start.

For Italian, an easy thing to start with would be lasagna.

You can make all the parts individually, and then just layer them and bake. Each layer can pretty much be as simple, or as complex, as you want it to be.

Lasagna at it's most basic is just red sauce, ricotta cheese, lasagna noodles, and mozzarella. That's it.

Cook the lasagna noodles as instructed on the box, and set aside. I definitely recommend adding some oil to the water when you cook them, by the way, as it'll keep them from sticking to each other, when you've set them aside.

If you feel like making your own noodles from scratch, more power to you. I suck at it, personally.

Layer noodles, ricotta cheese, sauce, mozzarella, and repeat.

The fun (as it is with most recipes I really enjoy) is in adding things, and making the basic stuff more complex.
It makes it a creative act.

I like to add (as separate layers) cooked Italian sausage (cased, cut into inch long pieces), pieces of chicken, beef, and pork (again, each meat in a separate layer), which have been breaded and fried separately, peeled and sliced eggplant, zucchini, whole mushrooms (separate layers), and even fresh baby spinach.

A good version is spinach and Italian sausage.

To the redsauce I'll add burgundy wine. The wine thins it out, and also adds a lot of flavor, and some acidity. I can make a passable redsauce from scratch, but I don't have a big problem with the stuff that comes in a jar, when it comes to lasagna, as long as it's of decent quality. The best thing about the jar stuff is knowing beforehand exactly what the consistency is going to be. I find that's important for this dish. 

In addition to redsauce, a good Bolognese is also a possibility, but it's pretty advanced, and because of the complexity of Bolognese, it's harder to add to it, profitably. I really am not that fond of it in lasagna, but it's a great sauce. I'll write up a recipe for it sometime, though. Maybe next time I make it.

To the ricotta cheese, I add chopped herbs (fresh basil and parsley, if I have them. I rarely use much oregano, except in hummus, because it upsets my stomach, but your mileage may vary.), melted butter, crushed garlic, egg yolk, and a little sugar. The sugar helps the ricotta cheese stand out, while the egg helps it "set up" while baking.

In addition to mozzarella (but not replacing it), you could also use provalone, asiago, and fresh parmezan. I'd suggest no more than 1 part other types of cheese to 2 parts mozzarella.

If you're going to use romano (and I love romano), I'd suggest just putting it on top, because it's got a lot of salt, which might throw off some of the internal flavors going on.

When baking, 350 degrees (Farenheit) for 45 minutes for 1 box of noodles is about right. It might need an hour, depending on the thickness. You want the cheese on top to start getting brown--part of the purpose of the cheese on top, by the way, is keeping the sauce from overflowing.

It's easy to fill the baking dish too full, so try to leave a little room on the top, to prevent the lasagna overflowing while it cooks.

If it's *really* thick, you could maybe reduce the heat to 275 degrees, and cook it for an hour, then raise the heat up to 350, and cook it for another 15-20 minutes.

[Hawkfrost]

Damn, now you got me hungry.

On the plus side, I made macaroni with redsauce last night, and it came out beautifully.
My recipe includes generous amounts of chili garlic sauce, hot sauce, garlic, and about a half a dozen spices. And then more hot sauce.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Hotsauce is good for everything. I've made a couple different kinds before. My favorite's just habanero (has to be home grown, though, and left on the vine until completely ripe) that's been boiled in white vinegar, and then jarred for atleast a year, but I tend to just buy the Louisiana redsauce from the store. I like tobasco, too.

I roasted a ham tonight, and made (Still making, actually--apparently, my grandmother's recipe requires 24 hours cooking time. I haven't had it, let alone made it, for years.) baked beans.

The baked bean recipe (cooking time aside) is extremely easy:

Soak 2 pounds of great northern beans overnight (following the instructions on the bag), then drain enough water off the beans (I used filtered water to soak them) that water is just covering the beans to a depth of maybe half an inch. Add 1 pound of hickory smoked bacon, that's been sliced into inch wide pieces (doesn't have to be exact), add 1 cup molasses, 1 cup of honey, and 1 cup of brown sugar, then bake at 250 degrees, for, well, 24 hours.

Then, if you're bacon-crazy, top the beans with another pound of bacon, and cook for another hour, at 350 degrees, until the bacon's nice and brown, but not burned.

I'm not that bacon crazy, not when I've got ham instead, but I do love baked beans with (piled on top of) potato salad.

Especially if there are green olives involved, and the potato salad is home made, and not that sickly sweet stuff you get at the grocery store (Potato salad should not be sweet, as far as I'm concerned, unless it's German hot potato salad, and only occasionally should it have any mustard in it.).

Not healthy, not in the least, but very tasty, and very filling.

The ham I marinated in milk overnight, and then basted with a combination of butter, more milk, garlic, honey, and black pepper, every half hour, for 6-7 hours, at 250 degrees while the beans cooked.

The pan drippings I made into ham gravy with just the addition of a brown roux. To make redeye gravy, I would just add a cup of strong black coffee to the gravy I have now, and cook it till it thickened up again. That'll go good sometime next week or so (I might freeze it), with a pot of greens from my garden, rice, and leftover ham.

[Awayfarer]

Just discovered this: Wasabi makes cole slaw palatable. I'm not generally a fan of cole slaw; seems to me like somebody started to make a salad and just got lazy. Of course, usually when you have slaw at a meal you're not likely to have wasabi around, but it's still nifty to know.

[Enzo]

I abandoned this thread. But I am back. I made vindaloo the other day because I've been wanting it since it came up on here.

Hotsauce is good for everything. I've made a couple different kinds before. My favorite's just habanero...

Agreed. But you should probably mention that Habanero hotsauce is strictly for badasses. Habs are milder when grown in a cooler climate (my dad used to grow em) but they're still incredibly deadly little peppers. Busha Brownes and Devils Revenge : Beyond Hell are both stupidly-hot habanero sauces...I've never bothered making my own.

Also, wasabi cole slaw sounds very, very good to me.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Yeah, habaneros aren't for the weak of colon.

It sounds good to me, too.

My mother makes the best coleslaw there is. I know, because I keep trying other kinds. Most other kinds (the cheesecake factory's version is a pleasant exception) just aren't edible. 

A truly great sandwitch is my mom's coleslaw and rare, thinly sliced venison, on toasted rye.

Wasabi's also good on fresh strawberries.

[Sowelu]

I just wanted to share a peanut sauce recipe from when I made thai stirfry every week for a long time:

- Get a sizable bowl or pan.
- Put smooth peanut butter into it, from one of the normal boring store brands, not something fancy like Adams.  I dunno, 2, 3 cups?
- Put some water in.  Stir.  Put some more water in.  Stir.  For about five minutes, until the mixture starts to turn a bit little white but the water all disappears.  Don't add too much.
- Hot sauce!  I use chili oil but it's not the best choice, because it only burns on the back of your tongue, not the front, and that means you will be suffering.  It takes a LOT of any sauce to override the peanut butter flavor to make it flavorful, but chili oil will all add up and burn your tongue even if you barely taste it.  Keep taste testing.  It's okay to use one of those soy-based hot sauces you can find, or anything else like that (ie a very tiny bit of Dave's)...just make sure it's real hot, and for god's sake stop before you add so much it will combust you.  Make sure it's mixed in well before you decide to keep adding more!
- Mince like three cloves of garlic into it, all tiny and stuff.  Yum!
- Sugar.  After you've mixed in all the other stuff, mix in sugar until it's actually a little bit sweet to the taste.  I use white sugar mostly, but brown sugar is also okay for a different taste.
- Too solid?  Add more water and keep stirring, until it's just barely at the 'turning white' stage.  Don't overstir.
- Heat on low until it starts to bubble a little bit, then put on top of stirfry broccoli, carrots, bok choy (yum!), mushrooms (yum!), white rice...

I don't like soy based peanut sauce (I hate it actually) but this is quite good.    It's a bit brutal on the calories though...  I can't figure out how to make it more of a sauce and less of a 'sits on top and tastes delicious'.

[SirHoneyBadger]

That sounds really, really good, Sowelu. I want. Esp. on broccoli and bok choy.

[umiman]

I abandoned this thread. But I am back. I made vindaloo the other day because I've been wanting it since it came up on here.

Hotsauce is good for everything. I've made a couple different kinds before. My favorite's just habanero...

Agreed. But you should probably mention that Habanero hotsauce is strictly for badasses. Habs are milder when grown in a cooler climate (my dad used to grow em) but they're still incredibly deadly little peppers. Busha Brownes and Devils Revenge : Beyond Hell are both stupidly-hot habanero sauces...I've never bothered making my own.

Also, wasabi cole slaw sounds very, very good to me.

Your habanero hotsauce is nothing but ketchup to us Malaysians.

[SirHoneyBadger]

umiman: Yeah, you guys have the right idea. I admire the Malay culture for a lot of reasons (despite not knowing a great deal about it), and your peppers are definitely one of those reasons.

I wish I knew more about it-and your cuisine-than I do, to be honest.

[Labs]

I love cooking aswell. Anyone interested in a chili recipie?